Now, however, as he gained an erect posture, and turned a threatening look upon his assailant, the onlookers, who all knew him, and all hated and feared him, saw a sudden and surprising transformation. The red all died out of his face, the eyes seemed starting from their sockets, the lower jaw dropped abjectly and suddenly, and, with a yell of terror, John Burrill lowered his head and dashed from the house, as if pursued by a legion of spectres.
CHAPTER XIX.
NANCE BURRILL'S WARNING.
The sudden and surprising exit of Burrill caused, for a moment, a stay of proceedings, and left the group, so rapidly gathered in Nance Burrill's kitchen, standing en tableaux, for a full minute.
Dr. Heath was the first to recover from his surprise, and as he took in the absurdity of the scene, he uttered a low laugh, and turned once more toward the woman, Nance, who seemed to have lost herself in a prolonged stare.
"Your persecutor does not like my looks, apparently," he said, at the same time taking from his pocket a small medicine case. "Or was it some of these good friends that put him to flight?" And he glanced at the group gathered near the door.
A woman with a child in her arms, and her husband with two more in charge, at her heels; a family group to the rescue; two or three old women, of course; and a man with a slouching gait, a shock of unruly red hair, and a face very much freckled across the cheek bones, and very red about the nose; the eyes, too, had an uncanny squint, as if nature had given up her task too soon and left him to survey the world through the narrow slits. This man had always an air of being profoundly interested in the smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working classes, and winning to himself some friends from a certain turbulent class who listened admiringly to his loud, communistic oratory.
Brooks had not been long in W——, but he had made rapid headway among that class who, having little or nothing to love or to fear, are not slow to relieve the monotony of very bare existence by appropriating to themselves the friendship of every hail fellow whom chance throws in their way.
Accordingly Brooks had become a sort of oracle among the dwellers in "Mill avenue," as the street was facetiously called, and he was ready for any dish of gossip, not infrequently making himself conspicuous as a teller of news; he was faithful in gathering up and retailing small items among such ladies of the "avenue" as, being exempted from mill work because of family cares, had time and inclination, and this latter was seldom lacking, to chatter with him about the latest mishap, or the one that was bound to occur soon.